NonStop is a series of server computers introduced to market in 1976 by Tandem Computers Incorporated, beginning with the NonStop product line. It was followed by the Tandem Integrity NonStop line of lock-step fault-tolerant computers, now defunct (not to be confused with the later and much different Hewlett-Packard Integrity product line extension). The original NonStop product line is currently offered by Hewlett Packard Enterprise since Hewlett-Packard Company's split in 2015. Because NonStop systems are based on an integrated hardware/software stack, Tandem and later HPE also developed the NonStop OS operating system for them.

NonStop systems are, to an extent, self-healing. To circumvent single points of failure, they are equipped with almost all redundant components. When a mainline component fails, the system automatically falls back to the backup.

These systems can be used by banks, stock exchanges, payment applications, retail companies, energy and utility services, healthcare organizations, manufacturers, telecommunication providers, transportation, and other enterprises requiring extremely high uptime.

History

Originally introduced in 1976 by Tandem Computers Inc., the line was later owned by Compaq (from 1997), Hewlett-Packard Company (from 2003) and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (since 2015). In 2005, the HP Integrity "NonStop i" (or TNS/E) servers, based on Intel Itanium microprocessors, was introduced. In 2014, the first "NonStop X" (or TNS/X) systems, based on Intel x86-64 processors, were introduced. Sales of the Itanium-based systems ended in July 2020.

The systems support relational database management systems like NonStop SQL and hierarchical databases such as Enscribe.

Languages supported include Java, C, C++, and optimized for transaction processing. Average availability levels of 99.999% have been observed. NonStop systems feature a massively parallel processing (MPP) architecture and provide linear scalability. Each CPU runs its own copy of the OS, and systems can be expanded up to over 4000 CPUs. This is a shared-nothing architecture—a "share nothing" arrangement also known as loosely coupled multiprocessing.

Due to the integrated hardware/software stack and a single system image for even the largest configurations, system management requirements for NonStop systems are rather low. In most deployments there is just a single production server, not a complex server farm.

Most customers also have a backup server in a remote location for IT disaster recovery. There are standard products to keep the data of the production and the backup server in sync, for example, HPE's Remote Database Facility (RDF), hence there is fast takeover and little to no data loss also in a disaster situation with the production server being disabled or destroyed.

HP also developed a data warehouse and business intelligence server line, HP Neoview, based on the NonStop line. It acted as a database server, providing NonStop OS and NonStop SQL, but lacked the transaction processing functionality of the original NonStop systems. The line was retired, and no longer marketed, as of 24 January 2011.

See also

  • List of compilers – includes some compilers for NonStop
  • Master-checker
  • Reliability engineering
  • Stratus Technologies

References

Sources

  • HPE NonStop